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Of Furs and Wampum

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Christopher Carfi on his Social Customer Manifesto blog has a great post[Let's Look at the Big Picture]that talks about Information as the new form of "money" by looking at how the concept of "money" wasfirst formed 150 years ago. Here's an excerpt:

Lesson 1: "Money" was very fragmented for a very long period of time after the colonization of North America

"Money" as we think of it in the form of cash/paper currency has only been around for about 150 years. Over a period of almost two hundred years both before and after that time, a number of fragmented methods were used to exchange value.

Lesson 2: Everybody needs to win

After the ideas of "cash" and "checks" had taken hold and become widespread, there were still many inefficiencies in the system. Cash is cumbersome, and subject to loss. Checks may bounce. This continued until the mid-1900's.

Enter the credit card.*

The credit card resonated with both customers and vendors because both parties received benefits.

Now, the widespread usage of credit cards was not something the occurred overnight. Instead, it was something that occurred over a generation. In 1970, only 16% of American households had credit cards. However, by 1995, that number had climbed to 65%.

We are now looking at Information in much the same way. It is fragmented, it is used to represent value, it is hoarded by some, shared by others. In much that "brown" is the new "black", does that mean "information" is the new"money"?

A related blog post from Shawn over at Anecdote discusses a panelist discussion of Albert Camus' work,The Stranger. Here is an excerpt:

... meaning is not pre-inscribed in the world around us and we are continuously seeking meaning in an inherently meaningless world. I almost toppled off the step machine. Do we live in an inherently meaningless world? On first thought I think the answer is yes. The onus is on us to make sense of our world.

And here is where information, by itself, is not of value unless people place value on it. Just as people valued Wampum and Furs, and could therefore trade it for other goods, people trade information for other itemsof value. But the onus is on us to make sense of the information, to determine the meaning of it, and use thisto help drive business or other accomplishments.

Are you leveraging information as well as investors leverage other people's money? If not, IBM can help.